506 




EDMUND BURKE 



BY 



DR. JOHN LORD 






zA Specimen Lecture from the Completed Edition of Dr. Lord's 
" Beacon Lights of History 



JAMES CLARKE 8f COMPANY 

Publishers : 3, 5 and 7 West 22d Street, New York 









These pages 'will gi<ve you an idea of 
just how interesting the "Beacon 
Lights " lectures are. The paper and 
press c work are the same as appear in 
the 'volumes themselves. 



EDMUND BURKE. 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 

TT would be difficult to select an example of a more 
-*- lofty and irreproachable character among the great 
statesmen of England than Edmund Burke. He is not 
a puzzle, like Oliver Cromwell, although there are in- 
consistencies in the opinions he advanced from time 
to time. He takes very much the same place in the 
parliamentary history of his country as Cicero took in 
the Eoman senate. Like that greatest of Koman orators 
and statesmen, Burke was upright, conscientious, con- 
servative, religious, and profound. Like him, he lifted 
up his earnest voice against corruption in the govern- 
ment, against great state criminals, against demagogues, 
against rash innovations. Whatever diverse opinions 
may exist as to his political philosophy, there is only 
one opinion as to his character, which commands uni- 
versal respect. Although he was the most conservative 
of statesmen, clinging to the Constitution, and to con- 
secrated traditions and associations both in Church and 



68 EDMUND BURKE. 

State, still his name is associated with the most impor- 
tant and salutary reforms which England made for half 
a century. He seems to have been sent to instruct and 
guide legislators in a venal and corrupt age. To my 
mind Burke looms up, after the lapse of a century, as a 
prodigy of thought and knowledge, devoted to the good 
of his country ; an unselfish and disinterested patriot, 
as wise and sagacious as he was honest ; a sage whose 
moral wisdom shines brighter and brighter, since it was 
based on the immutable principles of justice and 
morality. One can extract more profound and striking 
epigrams from his speeches and writings than from any 
prose writer that England has produced, if we except 
Francis Bacon. And these writings and speeches are 
still valued as among the most precious legacies of 
former generations ; they form a thesaurus of political 
wisdom which statesmen can never exhaust. Burke 
has left an example which all statesmen will do well 
to follow. He was not a popular favorite, like Fox 
and Pitt ; he was not born to greatness, like North and 
Newcastle ; he was not liked by the king or the nobil- 
ity ; he was generally in the ranks of the opposition ; 
he was a new man, like Cicero, in an aristocratic age, — 
yet he conquered by his genius the proudest prejudices ; 
he fought his way upward, inch by inch ; he was the 
founder of a new national policy, although it was 
bitterly opposed ; and he died universally venerated for 



Sousco UB&&©!^ 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 69 

his integrity, wisdom, and foresight. He was the most 
remarkable man, on the whole, who has taken part in 
public affairs, from the Revolution to our times. Of 
course, the life and principles of so great a man are a 
study. If history has any interest or value, it is to 
show the influence of such a man on his own age and 
the ages which have succeeded, — to point out his con- 
tribution to civilization. 

Edmund Burke was born, 1730, of respectable parents 
in Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dub- 
lin, where he made a fair proficiency, but did not give 
promise of those rare powers which he afterwards 
exhibited. He was no prodigy, like Cicero, Pitt, and 
Macaulay. He early saw that his native country pre- 
sented no adequate field for him, and turned his steps 
to London at the age of twenty, where he entered 
as a student of law in the Inner Temple, — since the 
Bar was then, what it was at Rome, what it still is in 
modern capitals, the usual resort of ambitious young 
men. But Burke did not like the law as a profession, 
and early dropped the study of it; not because he 
failed in industry, for he was the most plodding of 
students; not because he was deficient in the gift of 
speech, for he was a born orator ; not because his mind 
repelled severe logical deductions, for he was the most 
philosophical of the great orators of his day, — not be- 



70 EDMUND BURKE. 

cause the law was not a noble field for the exercise of 
the highest faculties of the mind, but probably because 
he was won by the superior fascinations of literature 
and philosophy. Bacon could unite the study of divine 
philosophy with professional labors as a lawyer, also 
with the duties of a legislator ; but the instances are 
rare where men have united three distinct spheres, and 
gained equal distinction in all. Cicero did, and Bacon, 
and Lord Brougham; but not Erskine, nor Pitt, nor 
Canning. Even two spheres are as much as most 
distinguished men have filled, — the law with politics, 
like Thurlow and Webster ; or politics with literature, 
like Gladstone and Disraeli. Dr. Johnson, Garrick, 
and Eeynolds, the early friends of Burke, filled only 
one sphere. 

The early literary life of Burke was signalized by his 
essay on " The Sublime and Beautiful," original in its 
design and execution, a model of philosophical criticism, 
extorting the highest praises from Dugald Stewart and 
the Abbe* Baynal, and attracting so much attention that 
it speedily became a text-book in the universities. For- 
tunately he was able to pursue literature, with the aid 
of a small patrimony (about .£300 a year), without 
being doomed to the hard privations of Johnson, or the 
humiliating shifts of Goldsmith. He lived independ- 
ently of patronage from the great, — the bitterest trial 
of the literati of the eighteenth century, which drove 




After the painting by J. Barry, Dublin National Gallery 
EDMUND BURKE 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 71 

Cowper mad, and sent Eousseau to attics and solitudes, 
— so that in his humble but pleasant home, with his 
young wife, with whom he lived amicably, he could 
see his friends, the great men of the age, and bestow 
an unostentatious charity, and maintain his literary 
rank and social respectability. 

v I have sometimes wondered why Burke did not pur- 
sue this quiet and beautiful life, — free from the turmoils 
of public contest, with leisure, and friends, and Nature, 
and truth, — and prepare treatises which would have 
been immortal, for he was equal to anything he at- 
tempted. But such was not to be. He was needed in 
the House of Commons, then composed chiefly of fox- 
hunting squires and younger sons of nobles (a body as 
ignorant as it was aristocratic), — the representatives 
not of the people but of the landed proprietors, intent 
on aggrandizing their families at the expense of the 
nation, — and of fortunate merchants, manufacturers, 
and capitalists, in love with monopolies. Such an 
assembly needed at that day a schoolmaster, a teacher 
in the principles of political economy and political 
wisdom ; a leader in reforming disgraceful abuses ; a 
lecturer on public duties and public wrongs; a pa- 
triot who had other views than spoils and place ; a man 
who saw the right, and was determined to uphold it 
whatever the number or power of his opponents. So 
Edmund Burke was sent among them, — ambitious 



72 EDMUND BURKE. 

doubtless, stern, intellectually proud, incorruptible, in- 
dependent, not disdainful of honors and influence, but 
eager to render public services. 

It has been the great ambition of Englishmen since 
the Eevolution to enter Parliament, not merely for 
political influence, but also for social position. Only 
rich men, or members of great families, have found it 
easy to do so. To such men a pecuniary compensa- 
tion is a small affair. Hence, members of Parliament 
have willingly served without pay, which custom has 
kept poor men of ability from aspiring to the position. 
It was not easy, even for such a man as Burke, to 
gain admission into this aristocratic assembly. He 
did not belong to a great family; he was only a 
man of genius, learning, and character. The squire- 
archy of that age cared no more for literary fame 
than the Eoman aristocracy did for a poet or an actor. 
So Burke, ambitious and able as he was, must bide 
his time. 

His first step in a political career was as private 
secretary to Gerard Hamilton, who was famous for 
having made but one speech, and who was chief sec- 
retary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of 
Halifax. Burke soon resigned his situation in disgust, 
since he was not willing to be a mere political tool. 
But his singular abilities had attracted the attention of 
the prime-minister, Lord Bockingham, who made him 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 73 

his private secretary, and secured his entrance into Par- 
liament. Lord Verney, for a seat in the privy council, 
was induced to give him a " rotten borough." 

Burke entered the House of Commons in 1765, at 
thirty-five years of age. He began his public life when 
the nation was ruled by the great Whig families, whose 
ancestors had fought the battles of reform in the times 
of Charles and James. This party had held power 
for seventy years, had forgotten the principles of the 
Eevolution, and had become venal and selfish, dividing 
among its chiefs the spoils of office. It had become as 
absolute and unscrupulous as the old kings whom it 
had once dethroned. It was an oligarchy of a few 
powerful Whig noblemen, whose rule was supreme in 
England. Burke joined this party, but afterwards de- 
serted it, or rather broke it up, when he perceived its 
arbitrary character, and its disregard of the funda- 
mental principles of the Constitution. He was able 
to do this after its unsuccessful attempt to coerce the 
American colonies. 

American difficulties were the great issue of that 
day. The majority of the Parliament, both Lords and 
Commons, — sustained by King George III., one of the 
most narrow-minded, obstinate, and stupid princes who 
ever reigned in England ; who believed in an absolute 
jurisdiction over the colonies as an integral part of the 
empire, and was bent not only in enforcing this juris- 



74 EDMUND BURKE. 

diction, but also resorted, to the most offensive and 
impolitic measures to accomplish it, — this omnipotent 
Parliament, fancying it had a right to tax America 
without her consent, without a representation even, was 
resolved to carry out the abstract rights of a supreme 
governing power, both in order to assert its prerogative 
and to please certain classes in England who wished 
relief from the burden of taxation. And because Par- 
liament had this power, it would use it, against the 
dictates of expediency and the instincts of common- 
sense ; yea, in defiance of the great elemental truth in 
government that even thrones rest on the affections 
of the people. Blinded and infatuated with notions of 
prerogative, it would not even learn lessons from that 
conquered country which for five hundred years it had 
vainly attempted to coerce, and which it could finally 
govern only by a recognition of its rights. 

Now, the great career of Burke began by opposing the 
leading opinions of his day in reference to the coercion 
of the American colonies. He discarded all theories and 
abstract rights. He would not even discuss the subject 
whether Parliament had a right to tax the colonies. 
He took the side of expediency and common-sense. It 
was enough for him that it was foolish and irritating to 
attempt to exercise abstract powers which could not be 
carried out. He foresaw and he predicted the conse- 
quences of attempting to coerce such a people as the 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 75 



Americans with the forces which England could com- 
mand. He pointed out the infatuation of the ministers 
of the crown, then led by Lord North. His speech 
against the Boston Port Bill was one of the most brill- 
iant specimens of oratory ever displayed in the House 
of Commons. He did not encourage the colonies in 
rebellion, but pointed out the course they would surely 
pursue if the irritating measures of the Government 
were not withdrawn. He advocated conciliation, the 
withdrawal of theoretic rights, the repeal of obnox- 
ious taxes, the removal of restrictions on American 
industry, the withdrawal of monopolies and of un- 
generous distinctions. He would bind the two coun- 
tries together by a cord of love. When some member 
remarked that it was horrible for children to rebel 
against their parents, Burke replied: "It is true the 
Americans are our children ; but when children ask for 
bread, shall we give them a stone ? " For ten years he 
labored with successive administrations to procure recon- 
ciliation. He spoke nearly every day. He appealed to 
reason, to justice, to common-sense. But every speech 
he made was a battle with ignorance and prejudice. " If 
you must employ your strength," said he indignantly, 
" employ it to uphold some honorable right. I do not 
enter upon metaphysical distinctions, — I hate the very 
name of them. Nobody can be argued into slavery. If 
you cannot reconcile your sovereignty with their free- 



7G EDMUND BURKE. 



dom, the colonists will cast your sovereignty in your 
face. It is not enough that a statesman means well ; 
duty demands that what is right should not only be 
made known, but be made prevalent, — that what is 
evil should not only be detected, but be defeated. Do 
not dream that your register, your bonds, your affi- 
davits, your instructions, are the things which hold 
together the great texture of the mysterious whole. 
These dead instruments do not make a government. 
It is the spirit that pervades and vivifies an empire 
which infuses that obedience without which your army 
would be a base rabble and your navy nothing but 
rotten timber." Such is a fair specimen of his elo- 
quence, — earnest, practical, to the point, yet appealing 
to exalted sentiments and pervaded with moral wis- 
dom ; the result of learning as well as the dictate of a 
generous and enlightened policy. When reason failed, 
he resorted to sarcasm and mockery. " Because," said 
he, " we have a right to tax America we must do it ; 
risk everything, forfeit everything, take into consider- 
ation nothing but our right. infatuated ministers ! 
Like a silly man, full of his prerogative over the beasts 
of the field, who says, there is wool on the [back of a 
wolf, and therefore he must be sheared. What ! shear 
a wolf ? Yes. But have you considered the trouble ? 
Oh, I have considered nothing 'but my right. A wolf 
is an animal that has wool ; all animals that have 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 77 

wool are to be sheared ; and therefore I will shear the 
wolf." 

But I need not enlarge on his noble efforts to prevent 
a war with the colonies. They were all in vain. You 
cannot reason with infatuation, — Quern deus vult per- 
dere, prius dementat. The logic of events at last showed 
the wisdom of Burke and the folly of the king and his 
ministers, and of the nation at large. The disasters 
and the humiliation which attended the American war 
compelled the ministry to resign, and the Marquis 
of Eockingham became prime-minister in 1782, and 
Burke, the acknowledged leader of his party, became 
paymaster of the forces, — an office at one time worth 
£25,000 a year, before the reform which Burke had 
instigated. But this great statesman was not admitted 
to the cabinet ; George III. did not like him, and his 
connections were not sufficiently powerful to overcome 
the royal objection. In our times he would have been 
rewarded with a seat on the treasury bench ; with less 
talents than he had, the commoners of our day become 
prime-ministers. But Burke did not long enjoy even 
the office of paymaster. On the death of Lord Eocking- 
ham, a few months after he had formed the ministry, 
Burke retired from the only office he ever held. And 
he retired to Beaconsfield, — an estate which he had 
purchased with the assistance of his friend Eocking- 
ham, where he lived when parliamentary duties per- 



78 EDMUND BURKE. 

mitted, in that state of blended elegance, leisure, and 
study which, is to be found, in the greatest perfection, 
in England alone. 

The political power of Burke culminated at the 
close of the war with America, but not his political in- 
fluence : and there is a great difference between power 
and influence. JSTor do we read that Burke, after this, 
headed the opposition. That position was shared by- 
Charles James Fox, who ultimately supplanted his 
master as the leader of his party ; not because Burke 
declined in wisdom or energy, but because Fox had 
more skill as a debater, more popular sympathies, and 
more influential friends. Burke, like Gladstone, was 
too stern, too irritable, too imperious, too intellectually 
proud, perhaps too unyielding, to control such an igno- 
rant, prejudiced, and aristocratic body as the House 
of Commons, jealous of his ascendency and writhing 
under his rebukes. It must have been galling to the 
great philosopher to yield the palm to lesser men ; but 
such has ever been the destiny of genius, except in 
crises of public danger. Of all things that politicians 
hate is the domination of a man who will not stoop to 
flatter, who cannot be bribed, and who will be certain 
to expose vices and wrongs. The world will not bear 
rebukes. The fate of prophets is to be stoned. A 
stern moral greatness is repulsive to the weak and 
wicked. Parties reward mediocre men, whom they can 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 79 

use or bend ; and the greatest benefactors lose their 
popularity when they oppose the enthusiasm of new 
ideas, or become austere in their instructions. Thus 
the greatest statesman that this country has produced 
since Alexander Hamilton, lost his prestige when his 
conciliating policy became offensive to a rising party 
whose watchword was " the higher law," although, by 
his various conflicts with Southern leaders and his 
loyalty to the Constitution, he educated the people to 
sustain the very war which he foresaw and dreaded. 
And had that accomplished senator from Massachusetts, 
Charles Sumner, who succeeded to Webster's seat, and 
who in his personal appearance and advocacy for reform 
strikingly resembled Burke, — had he remained unin- 
jured to our day, with increasing intellectual powers 
and profounder moral wisdom, I doubt whether even 
he would have had much influence with our present 
legislators; for he had all the intellectual defects of 
both Burke and Webster, and never was so popular as 
either of them at one period of their career, while he 
certainly was inferior to both in native force, experience, 
and attainments. 

The chief labors of Burke for the first ten years of 
his parliamentary life had been mainly in connection 
with American affairs, and which the result proved he 
comprehended better than any man in England. Those 
of the next ten years were directed principally to Indian 



80 EDMUND BURKE. 

difficulties, in which he showed the same minuteness of 
knowledge, the same grasp of intellect, the same moral 
wisdom, the same good sense, and the same regard for 
justice, that he had shown concerning the colonies. 
But in discussing Indian affairs his eloquence takes a 
loftier flight ; he is less conciliating, more in earnest, 
more concerned with the principles of immutable obli- 
gations. He abhors the cruelties and tyranny inflicted 
on India by Clive and Hastings. He could see no 
good from an aggrandizement purchased by injustice 
and wrong. If it was criminal for an individual to 
cheat and steal, it was equally atrocious for a nation 
to plunder and oppress another nation, infidel or pagan, 
white or black. A righteous anger burned in the 
breast of Burke as he reflected on the wrongs and 
miseries of the natives of India. Why should that 
ancient country be ruled for no other purpose than 
to enrich the younger sons of a grasping aristocracy 
and the servants of an insatiable and unscrupulous 
Company whose monopoly of spoils was the scandal 
of the age ? If ever a reform was imperative in the 
government of a colony, it was surely in India, where 
the government was irresponsible. The English courts 
of justice there were more terrible to the natives than 
the very wrongs they pretended to redress. The cus- 
toms and laws and moral ideas of the conquered 
country were spurned and ignored by the greedy scions 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 81 

of gentility who were sent to rule a population ten 
times larger than that between the Humber and the 
Thames. 

So Burke, after the most careful study of the con- 
dition of India, lifted up his voice against the iniquities 
which were winked at by Parliament. But his fierce 
protest arrayed against him all the parties that in- 
dorsed these wrongs, or who were benefited by them. 
I need not dwell on his protracted labors for ten years 
in behalf of right, without the sympathies of those who 
had formerly supported him. No speeches were ever 
made in the English House of Commons which equalled, 
in eloquence and power, those he made on the Nabob of 
Arcot's debts and the impeachment of Warren Hast- 
ings. In these famous philippics, he fearlessly exposed 
the peculations, the misrule, the oppression, and the 
inhuman heartlessness of the Company's servants, — 
speeches which extorted admiration, while they humili- 
ated and chastised. I need not describe the nine years' 
prosecution of a great criminal, and the escape of 
Hastings, more guilty and more fortunate than Verres, 
from the punishment he merited, through legal techni- 
calities, the apathy of men in power, the private influ- 
ence of the throne, and the sympathies which fashion 
excited in his behalf, — and, more than all, because of 
the undoubted service he had rendered to his country, 
if it was a service to extend her rule by questionable 



82 EDMUND BURKE.] 

means to the farthermost limits of the globe. I need 
not speak of the obloquy which Burke incurred from 
the press, which teemed with pamphlets and books 
and articles to undermine his great authority, all in 
the interests of venal and powerful monopolists. Nor 
did he escape the wrath of the electors of Bristol, — 
a narrow-minded town of India traders and Negro 
dealers, — who withdrew from him their support. He 
had been solicited, in the midst of his former eclat, to 
represent this town, rather than the " rotten borough " 
of Wendover ; and he proudly accepted the honor, and 
was the idol of his constituents until he presumed to 
disregard their instructions in matters of which he con- 
sidered they were incompetent to judge. His famous 
letter to the electors, in which he refutes and ridicules 
their claim to instruct him, as the shoemakers of Lynn 
wished to instruct Daniel Webster, is a model of 
irony, as well as a dignified rebuke of all ignorant 
constituencies, and a lofty exposition of the duties of 
a statesman rather than of a politician. 

He had also incurred the displeasure of the Bristol 
electors by his manly defence of the rights of the Irish 
Catholics, who since the conquest of William III. had 
been subjected to the most unjust and annojdng treat- 
ment that ever disgraced a Protestant government. 
The injustices under which Ireland groaned were 
nearly as repulsive as the cruelties inflicted upon the 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 83 

Protestants of France during the reign of Louis XIV. 
" On the suppression of the rebellion under Tyrconnel," 
says Morley, " nearly the whole of the land was con- 
fiscated, the peasants were made beggars and outlaws, 
the Penal Laws against Catholics were enforced, and 
the peasants were prostrate in despair." Even in 1765 
" the native Irish were regarded by their Protestant op- 
pressors with exactly that combination of intense con- 
tempt and loathing, rage and terror, which his American 
counterpart would have divided between the Indian and 
the Negro." Not the least of the labors of Burke was to 
bring to the attention of the nation the wrongs inflicted 
on the Irish, and the impossibility of ruling a people 
who had such just grounds for discontent. " His letter 
upon the propriety of admitting the Catholics to the 
elective franchise is one of the wisest of all his produc- 
tions, — so enlightened is its idea of toleration, so saga- 
cious is its comprehension of political exigencies." He 
did not live to see his ideas carried out, but he was 
among the first to prepare the way for Catholic emanci- 
pation in later times. 

But a greater subject than colonial rights, or Indian 
wrongs, or persecution of the Irish Catholics agitated 
the mind of Burke, to which he devoted the energies of 
his declining years ; and this was, the agitation growing 
out of the French Ee volution. When that "roaring 
conflagration of anarchies" broke out, he was in the 



84 EDMUND BURKE. 

full maturity of his power and his fame, — a wise old 
statesman, versed in the lessons of human experience, 
who detested sophistries and abstract theories and 
violent reforms ; a man who while he loved liberty 
more than any political leader of his day, loathed the 
crimes committed in its name, and who was sceptical 
of any reforms which could not be carried on with- 
out a wanton destruction of the foundations of society 
itself. He was also a Christian who planted himself 
on the certitudes of religious faith, and was shocked 
by the flippant and shallow infidelity which passed 
current for progress and improvement. Next to the 
infidel spirit which would make Christianity and a 
corrupted church identical, as seen in the mockeries 
of Voltaire, and would destroy both under the guise of 
hatred of superstition, he despised those sentimentali- 
ties with which Eousseau and his admirers would veil 
their disgusting immoralities. To him hypocrisy and 
infidelity, under whatever name they were baptized by 
the new apostles of human rights, were mischievous 
and revolting. And as an experienced statesman he 
held in contempt the inexperience of the Eevolutionary 
leaders, and the unscrupulous means they pursued to 
accomplish even desirable ends. 

No man more than Burke admitted the necessity of 
even radical reforms, but he would have accomplished 
them without bloodshed and cruelties. He would not 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 85 

have removed undeniable evils by introducing still 
greater ones. He regarded the remedies proposed by 
the Eevolutionary quacks as worse than the disease 
which they professed to cure. No man knew better 
than he the corruptions of the Catholic church in 
France, and the persecuting intolerance which that 
church had stimulated there ever since the revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Nantes, — an intolerance so cruel 
that to be married unless in accordance with Catholic 
usage was to live in concubinage, and to be suspected 
of Calvinism was punishable by imprisonment or the 
galleys. But because the established church was cor- 
rupt and intolerant, he did not see the necessity for 
the entire and wholesale confiscation of its lands and 
possessions (which had not been given originally by 
the nation, but were the bequests of individuals), there- 
by giving a vital wound to all the rights of property 
which civilization in all countries has held sacred and 
inviolable. Burke knew that the Bourbon absolute 
monarchy was oppressive and tyrannical, extravagant 
and indifferent to the welfare of the people ; but he 
would not get rid of it by cutting off the head of the 
king, especially when Louis was willing to make great 
concessions : he would have limited his power, or 
driven him into exile as the English punished James II. 
He knew that the nobles abused their privileges ; he 
would have taken them away rather than attempt 



86 EDMUND BURKE. 

to annul their order, and decimate them by horrid 
butcheries. He did not deny the necessity of reforms 
so searching that they would be almost tantamount to 
revolution ; but he would not violate both constitutional 
forms and usages, and every principle of justice and 
humanity, in order to effect them. 

To Burke's mind, the measures of the revolutionists 
were all mixed up with impieties, sophistries, absurd- 
ities, and blasphemies, to say nothing of cruelties 
and murders. What good could grow out of such an 
evil tree ? Could men who ignored all duties be the 
expounders of rights ? What structure could last, 
when its foundation was laid on the sands of hy- 
pocrisy, injustice, ignorance, and inexperience ? What 
sympathy could such a man as Burke have for athe- 
istic theories, or a social progress which scorned the 
only conditions by which society can be kept together ? 
The advanced men who inaugurated the Reign of Terror 
were to him either fools, or fanatics, or assassins. He 
did not object to the meeting of the States- General to 
examine into the intolerable grievances, and, if neces- 
sary, to strip the king of tyrannical powers, for such a 
thing the English parliament had done ; but it was quite 
another thing for one branch of the States-General to 
constitute itself the nation, and usurp the powers and 
functions of the other two branches ; to sweep away, 
almost in a single night, the constitution of the realm ; 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 87 

to take away all the powers of the king, imprison him, 
mock him, insult him, and execute him, and then to 
cut off the heads of the nobles who supported him, 
and of all people who defended him, even women 
themselves, and convert the whole land into a Pande- 
monium ! What contempt must he have had for legis- 
lators who killed their king, decimated their nobles, 
robbed their clergy, swept away all social distinctions, 
abolished the rites of religion, — all symbols, honors, 
and privileges ; all that was ancient, all that was ven- 
erable, all that was poetic, even to abbey churches ; yea, 
dug up the very bones of ancient monarchs from the con- 
secrated vaults where they had reposed for centuries, and 
scattered them to the winds ; and then amid the mad 
saturnalia of sacrilege, barbarity, and blasphemy to pro- 
claim the reign of " Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality," 
with Marat for their leader, and Danton for their 
orator, and Robespierre for their high-priest; and, finally, 
to consummate the infamous farce of reform by openly 
setting up a wanton woman as the idol of their wor- 
ship, under the name of the Goddess of Reason ! 

But while Burke saw only one side of these atrocities, 
he did not close his eyes to the necessity for reforms. 
Had he been a Frenchman, he would strenuously have 
lifted up his voice to secure them, but in a legal and 
constitutional manner, — not by violence, not by disre- 
garding the principles of justice and morality to secure 



88 EDMUND BURKE. 

a desirable end. He was one of the few statesmen 
then living who would not do evil that good might 
come. He was no Jesuit. There is a class of politi- 
cians who would have acted differently ; and this class, 
in his day, was made up of extreme and radical people, 
with infidel sympathies. With this class he was no 
favorite, and never can be. Conservative people judge 
him by a higher standard ; they shared at the time in 
his sympathies and prejudices. 

Even in America the excesses of the Eevolution 
excited general abhorrence ; much more so in England. 
And it was these excesses, this mode of securing reform, 
not reform itself, which excited Burke's detestation. 
Who can wonder at this ? Those who accept crimes 
as a necessary outbreak of revolutionary passions adopt 
a philosophy which would veil the world with a fune- 
real and diabolical gloom. Keformers must be taught 
that no reforms achieved by crime are worth the cost. 
Nor is it just to brand an illustrious man with in- 
difference to great moral and social movements because 
he would wait, sooner than upturn the very principles 
on which society is based. And here is the great 
difficulty in estimating the character and labors of 
Burke. Because he denounced the French Eevolu- 
tion, some think he was inconsistent with his early 
principles. Not at all ; it was the crimes and excesses 
of the Eevolution he denounced, not the impulse of 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 89 

the French people to achieve their liberties. Those 
crimes and excesses he believed to be inconsistent 
with an enlightened desire for freedom ; but freedom 
itself, to its utmost limit and application, consistent 
with law and order, he desired. Is it necessary for 
mankind to win its greatest boons by going through a 
sea of anarchies, madness, assassinations, and massa- 
cres ? Those who take this view of revolutioD, it 
seems to me, are neither wise nor learned. If a king 
makes war on his subjects, they are warranted in tak- 
ing up arms in their defence, even if the civil war is 
followed by enormities. Thus the American colonies 
took up arms against George III.; but they did not 
begin with crimes. Louis XVI. did not take up arms 
against his subjects, nor league against them, until they 
had crippled and imprisoned him. He made even great 
concessions ; he was willing to make still greater to save 
his crown. But the leaders of the revolution were not 
content with these, not even with the abolition of 
feudal privileges; they wanted to subvert the mon- 
archy itself, to abolish the order of nobility, to sweep 
away even the Church, — not the Catholic establish- 
ment only, but the Christian religion also, with all the 
institutions which time and poetry had consecrated. 
Their new heaven and new earth was not the reign 
of the saints, which the millenarians of Cromwell's 
time prayed for devoutly, but a sort of communistic 



90 EDMUND BURKE. 

equality, where every man could do precisely as he 
liked, take even his neighbor's property, and annihilate 
all distinctions of society, all inequalities of condition, 
— a miserable, fanatical dream, impossible to realize 
under any form of government which can be conceived. 
It was this spirit of reckless innovation, promulgated 
by atheists and drawn logically from some principles 
of the "Social Contract" of which Kousseau was the 
author, which excited the ire of Burke. It was license, 
and not liberty. 

And while the bloody and irreligious excesses of the 
Eevolution called out his detestation, the mistakes 
and incapacity of the new legislators excited his con- 
tempt. He condemned a compulsory paper currency, — 
not a paper currency, but a compulsory one, — and 
predicted bankruptcy. He ridiculed an army without 
a head, — not the instrument of the executive, but of 
a military democracy receiving orders from the clubs. 
He made sport of the legislature ruled by the com- 
mune, and made up not of men of experience, but of 
adventurers, stock-jobbers, directors of assignats, trus- 
tees for the sale of church-lands, who " took a consti- 
tution in hand as savages would a looking-glass," — a 
body made up of those courtiers who wished to cut off 
the head of their king, of those priests who voted religion 
a nuisance, of those lawyers who called the laws a dead 
letter, of those philosophers who admitted no argument 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 91 

but the guillotine, of those sentimentalists who chanted 
the necessity of more blood, of butchers and bakers and 
brewers who would exterminate the very people who 
bought from them. 

And the result of all this wickedness and folly on 
the mind of Burke was the most eloquent and masterly 
political treatise probably ever written, — a treatise in 
which there may be found much angry rhetoric and 
some unsound principles, but which blazes with genius 
on every page, which coruscates with wit, irony, and 
invective ; scornful and sad doubtless, yet full of moral 
wisdom ; a perfect thesaurus of political truths. I 
have no words with which to express my admiration 
for the wisdom and learning and literary excellence 
of the " Reflections on the French Revolution " as a 
whole, — so luminous in statement, so accurate in the 
exposure of sophistries, so full of inspired intuitions, 
so Christian in its tone. This celebrated work was 
enough to make any man immortal. It was written 
and rewritten with the most conscientious care. It 
appeared in 1790 ; and so great were its merits, so 
striking, and yet so profound, that thirty thousand 
copies were sold in a few weeks. It was soon trans- 
lated into all the languages of Europe, and was in the 
hands of all thinking men. It was hailed with espe- 
cial admiration by Christian and conservative classes, 
though bitterly denounced by many intelligent people 



92 EDMUND BURKE. 

as gloomy and hostile to progress. But whether liked 
or disliked, it made a great impression, and contributed 
to settle public opinion in reference to French affairs. 
What can be more just and enlightened than such 
sentiments as these, which represent the spirit of the 
treatise : — 

" Because liberty is to be classed among the blessings 
of mankind, am I to felicitate a madman who has escaped 
from the restraints of his cell ? There is no qualification 
for government but virtue and wisdom. Woe be to that 
country that would madly reject the service of talents and 
virtues. Nothing is an adequate representation of a State 
that does not represent its ability as well as property. Men 
have a right to justice, and the fruits of industry, and the 
acquisitions of their parents, and the improvement of their 
offspring, — to instruction in life and consolation in death ; 
but they have no right to what is unreasonable, and what is 
not for their benefit. The new professors are so taken up 
with rights that they have totally forgotten duties ; and with- 
out opening one new avenue to the understanding, they have 
succeeded in stopping those that lead to the heart. Those 
who attempt by outrage and violence to deprive men of any ad- 
vantage which they hold under the laws, proclaim war against 
society. When, I ask, will such truths become obsolete among 
enlightened people ; and when will they become stale % " 

But with this fierce protest against the madness and 
violence of the French Eevolution, the wisdom of Burke 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 93 

and of the English nation ended. The most experienced 
and sagacious man of his age, with all his wisdom and 
prescience, could see only one side of the awful politi- 
cal hurricane which he was so eloquent in denouncing. 
His passions and his prejudices so warped his mag- 
nificent intellect, that he could not see the good which 
was mingled with the evil; that the doctrine of equal- 
ity, if false when applied to the actual condition of men 
at their birth, is yet a state to which the institutions of 
society tend, under the influence of education and re- 
ligion ; that the common brotherhood of man, mocked 
by the tyrants which feudalism produced, is yet to be 
drawn from the Sermon on the Mount ; that the blood 
of a plebeian carpenter is as good as that of an aristo- 
cratic captain of artillery; that public burdens which 
bear heavily on the poor should also be shared equally 
by the rich ; that all laws should be abolished which 
institute unequal privileges ; that taxes should be paid 
by nobles as well as by peasants; that every man 
should be unfettered in the choice of his calling and 
profession ; that there should be unbounded toleration 
of religious opinions ; that no one should be arbitrarily 
arrested and confined without trial and proof of crime ; 
that men and women, with due regard to the rights of 
others, should be permitted to marry whomsoever they 
please ; that, in fact, a total change in the spirit of 
government, so imperatively needed in Trance, was 



94 EDMUND BURKE. 

necessary. These were among the great ideas which 
the reformers advocated, but which they did not know 
how practically to secure on those principles of justice 
which they abstractly invoked, — ideas never afterwards 
lost sight of, in all the changes of government. And 
it is remarkable that the flagrant evils which the Eevo- 
lution so ruthlessly swept away have never since been 
revived, and never can be revived any more than the 
oracles of Dodona or the bulls of Mediaeval Eome ; 
amid the storms and the whirlwinds and the fearful 
convulsions and horrid anarchies and wicked passions 
of a great catastrophe, the imperishable ideas of prog- 
ress forced their way. 

Nor could Burke foresee the ultimate results of the 
Eevolution any more than he would admit the truths 
which were overshadowed by errors and crimes. Nor, 
inflamed with rage and scorn, was he wise in the reme- 
dies he proposed. Only God can overrule the wrath of 
man, and cause melodious birth-songs to succeed the 
agonies of dissolution. Burke saw the absurdity of 
sophistical theories and impractical equality, — liberty 
running into license, and license running into crime; 
he saw pretensions, quackeries, inexperience, folly, 
and cruelty, and he prophesied what their legitimate 
effect would be : but he did not see in the Eevolution 
the pent-up indignation and despair of centuries, nor 
did he hear the voices of hungry and oppressed 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 



95 



millions crying to heaven for vengeance. He did not 
recognize the chastening hand of God on tyrants and 
sensualists ; he did not see the arm of retributive jus- 
tice, more fearful than the daggers of Eoman assassins, 
more stern than the overthrow of Persian hosts, more 
impressive than the handwriting on the wall of Bel- 
shazzar's palace ; nor could he see how creation would 
succeed destruction amid the burnings of that vast 
funeral pyre. He foresaw, perhaps, that anarchy 
would be followed by military despotism ; but he never 
anticipated a Napoleon Bonaparte, or the military 
greatness of a nation so recently ground down by Jaco- 
bin orators and sentimental executioners. He never 
dreamed that out of the depths and from the clouds 
and amid the conflagration there would come a deliver- 
ance, at least for a time, in the person of a detested 
conqueror ; who would restore law, develop industry, 
secure order, and infuse enthusiasm into a country so 
nearly ruined, and make that country glorious beyond 
precedent, until his mad passion for unlimited domin- 
ion should arouse insulted nations to form a coalition 
which even he should not be powerful enough to resist, 
gradually hemming him round in a king-hunt, until 
they should at last confine him on a rock in the ocean, 
to meditate and to die. 

Where Burke and the nation he aroused by his elo- 
quence failed in wisdom, was in opposing this revolu- 



96 EDMUND BURKE. 

tionary storm with bayonets. Had he and the leaders 
of his day confined themselves to rhetoric and argu- 
ments, if ever so exaggerated and irritating ; had they 
allowed the French people to develop their revolution 
in their own way, as they had the right to do, — then 
the most dreadful war of modern times, which lasted 
twenty years, would have been confined within smaller 
limits. Napoleon would have had no excuse for ag- 
gressive warfare ; Pitt would not have died of a broken 
heart ; large standing armies, the curse of Europe, would 
not have been deemed so necessary ; the ancient limits 
of Trance might have been maintained ; and a policy 
of development might have been inaugurated, rather 
than a policy which led to future wars and national 
humiliation. The gigantic struggles of Napoleon began 
when France was attacked by foreign nations, fighting 
for their royalties and feudalities, and aiming to sup- 
press a domestic revolution which was none of their 
concern, and which they imperfectly understood. 

But at this point we must stop, for I tread on 
ground where only speculation presumes to stand. The 
time has not come to solve such a mighty problem as 
the French Eevolution, or even the career of Napoleon 
Bonaparte. We can pronounce on the logical effects of 
right and wrong, — that violence leads to anarchy, and 
anarchy to ruin ; but we cannot tell what would have 
been the destiny of France if the Eevolution had not 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 97 

produced Napoleon, nor what would have been the 
destiny of England if Napoleon had not been circum- 
vented by the powers of Europe. On such questions 
we are children ; the solution of them is hidden by the 
screens of destiny ; we can only speculate. And since 
we short-sighted mortals cannot tell what will be the 
ultimate effect of the great agitations of society, whether 
begun in noble aspirations or in depraved passions, it is 
enough for us to settle down, with firm convictions, on 
what we can see, — that crimes, under whatever name 
they go, are eternally to be reprobated, whatever may 
be the course they are made to take by Him who 
rules the universe. It would be difficult to single out 
any memorable war in this world's history which has 
not been ultimately overruled for the good of the 
world, whatever its cause or character, — like the Cru- 
sades, the most unfortunate in their immediate effects 
of all the great wars which nations have madly waged. 
But this onty proves that God is stronger than devils, 
and that he overrules the wrath of man. "It must 
needs be that offences come ; but woe to that man by 
whom the offence cometh." There is only one standard 
by which to judge the actions of men ; there is only 
one rule whereby to guide nations or individuals, — 
and that is, to do right; to act on the principles of 
immutable justice. 

Now, whatever were the defects in the character or 



98 EDMUND BURKE. 

philosophy of Burke, it cannot be denied that this was 
the law which he attempted to obey, the rule which 
he taught to his generation. In this light, his life and 
labors command our admiration, because he did uphold 
the right and condemn the wrong, and was sufficiently 
clear-headed to see the sophistries which concealed the 
right and upheld the wrong. That was his peculiar 
excellence. How loftily his majestic name towers above 
the other statesmen of his troubled age ! Certainly no 
equal to him, in England, has since appeared, in those 
things which give permanent fame. The man who has 
most nearly approached him is Gladstone. If the 
character of our own Webster had been as reproach- 
less as his intellect was luminous and comprehensive, 
he might be named in the same category of illustrious 
men. Like the odor of sanctity, which was once sup- 
posed to emanate from a Catholic saint, the halo of 
Burke's imperishable glory is shed around every con- 
secrated retreat of that land which thus far has been 
the bulwark of European liberty. The English nation 
will not let him die ; he cannot die in the hearts and 
memories of man any more than can Socrates or Wash- 
ington. No nation will be long ungrateful for emi- 
nent public services, even if he who rendered them was 
stained by grave defects ; for it is services which make 
men immortal. Much more will posterity reverence 
those benefactors whose private lives were in harmony 



. POLITICAL MORALITY. 99 

with their principles, — the Hales, the L'Hopitals, the 
Hampdens of the world. To this class Burke undeni- 
ably belonged. All writers agree as to his purity of 
morals, his generous charities, his high social qualities, 
his genial nature, his love of simple pleasures, his deep 
affections, his reverence, his Christian life. He was a 
man of sorrows, it is true, like most profound and con- 
templative natures, whose labors are not fully appre- 
ciated, — like Cicero, Dante, and Michael Angelo. He 
was doomed, too, like Galileo, to severe domestic mis- 
fortunes. He was greatly afflicted by the death of his 
only son, in whom his pride and hopes were bound up. 
" I am like one of those old oaks which the late hurri- 
cane has scattered about me," said he. " I am torn up 
by the roots ; I lie prostrate on the earth." And 
when care and disease hastened his departure from a 
world he adorned, his body was followed to the grave 
by the most illustrious of the great men of the land, 
and the whole nation mourned as for a brother or a 
friend. 

But it is for his writings and published speeches 
that he leaves the most enduring fame ; and what is 
most valuable in his writings is his elucidation of fun- 
damental principles in morals and philosophy. And 
here was his power, — not his originality, for which he 
was distinguished in an eminent degree ; not learning, 
which amazed his auditors ; not sarcasm, of which he 



100 EDMUND BURKE. 

was a master ; not wit, with which he brought down 
the house ; not passion, which overwhelmed even such 
a man as Hastings ; not fluency, with every word in 
the language at his command ; not criticism, so search- 
ing that no sophistry could escape him ; not philoso- 
phy, musical as Apollo's lyre, — but insight into great 
principles, the moral force of truth clearly stated and 
fearlessly defended. This elevated him to a sphere 
which words and gestures, and the rich music and 
magnetism of voice and action can never reach, since 
it touched the heart and the reason and the conscience 
alike, and produced convictions that nothing can stifle. 
There were more famous and able men than he, in some 
respects, in Parliament at the time. Fox surpassed him 
in debate, Pitt in ready replies and adaptation to the 
genius of the house, Sheridan in wit, Townsend in parlia- 
mentary skill, Mansfield in legal acumen ; but no one of 
these great men was so forcible as Burke in the state- 
ment of truths which future statesmen will value. 
And as he unfolded and applied the imperishable prin- 
ciples of right and wrong, he seemed like an ancient 
sage bringing down to earth the fire of the divinities 
he invoked and in which he believed, not to chastise 
and humiliate, but to guide and inspire. 

In recapitulating the services by which Edmund 
Burke will ultimately be judged, I would say that he 
had a hand in almost every movement for which his 



POLITICAL MORALITY. 101 

generation is applauded. He gave an impulse to almost 
every political discussion which afterwards resulted in 
beneficent reform. Some call him a croaker, without 
sympathy for the ideas on which modern progress is 
based ; but he was really one of the great reformers 
of his day. He lifted up his voice against the slave- 
trade ; he encouraged and lauded the labors of Howard ; 
he supported the just claims of the Catholics ; he at- 
tempted, though a churchman, to remove the restric- 
tions to which dissenters were subjected; he opposed 
the cruel laws against insolvent debtors ; he sought to 
soften the asperities of the Penal Code ; he labored to 
abolish the custom of enlisting soldiers for life; he 
attempted to subvert the dangerous powers exercised 
by judges in criminal prosecutions for libel ; he sought 
financial reform in various departments of the State ; 
he would have abolished many useless offices in the 
government ; he fearlessly exposed the wrongs of the 
East India Company; he tried to bring to justice the 
greatest political criminal of the day ; he took the right 
side of American difficulties, and advocated a policy 
which would have secured for half a century longer the 
allegiance of the American colonies, and prevented the 
division of the British empire; he advocated measures 
which saved England, possibly, from French subju- 
gation ; he threw the rays of his genius over all polit- 
ical discussions ; and he left treatises which from his 



102 EDMUND BURKE. 

day to ours have proved a mine of political and moral 
wisdom, for all whose aim or business it has been to 
study the principles of law or government. These, 
truly, were services for which any country should be 
grateful, and which should justly place Edmund Burke 
on the list of great benefactors. These constitute a 
legacy of which all nations should be proud. 



AUTHOKITIES. 

Works and Correspondence of Edmund Burke; Life and Times of 
Edmund Burke, by Macknight (the ablest and fullest yet written) ; An 
Historical Study, by Morley (very able) ; Lives of Burke by Croly, Prior, 
and Bisset ; Grenville Papers ; Parliamentary History ; the Encyclopsedia 
Britannica has a full article on Burke ; Massey's History of England ; 
Chatham's Correspondence ; Moore's Life of Sheridan ; also the Lives of 
Pitt and Pox ; Lord Brougham's Sketch of Burke ; C. W. Dilke's Papers 
of a Critic ; Boswell's Life of Johnson. The most brilliant of Burke's 
writings, "Reflections on the Prench Revolution," should be read by 
everybody. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





